Possible to do well without any form of scumming?

[eo]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.adom (More info?)

Here's the question. I've played ADOM forever, but the farthest I've
ever got was to the Banshee, and was killed instantly because I didn't
know she was at that level (I still haven't been too terribly spoiled,
so I really don't know what exactly goes on everywhere).

I've been reading posts here and it appears that almost every winning
character used scumming of some sort at some time. Be it speed, abuse
of weakness for strength, etc... is it possible for someone to do well
without this stuff? I can routinely finish all the dwarven quests,
occasionally get Norrak's sword, and do most of the other early game
stuff...pyramid, kill the assassin prince, PC, VD, SMC, I can get to the
RoTHK but I've never had a good enough character to beat him.

I will say I've never had much luck at harvesting herbs, I generally
just pick them all, hoping for more later. I wouldn't consider that
scumming too much if I did try harvesting them, given it is a skill
designed to garner more herbs.

I've never got the water orb (is it in Blup's mom's cave?) I've never
been in the ToEF for more than five seconds. Did the gremlins once.
Killed a few steel zombies once, but not too far down in Darkforge. I
didn't generally do the infinite dungeon for experience or items, and
I've never been able to get in the tree.

Basically, I'm looking for some minor spoilers and responses from people
regarding training strength or speed from monster scumming. I know most
basic things, I think, like what morgia root and spenseweed can do for
stats, but I still need some help to get me past this early game stuff.

Thanks!
Svalsbard

 

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Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.adom (More info?)

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(Dunno if this is needed if he wants spoils)
EO wrote:
> Here's the question. I've played ADOM forever, but the farthest I've

> ever got was to the Banshee, and was killed instantly because I
didn't
> know she was at that level (I still haven't been too terribly
spoiled,
> so I really don't know what exactly goes on everywhere).
>

All the corpses hint that something is very, very dangerous about the
banshee level. It's too bad there's no way to learn about the banshee
short of the mad minstral (I think). Sorry about your character.

> I've been reading posts here and it appears that almost every winning

> character used scumming of some sort at some time. Be it speed,
abuse
> of weakness for strength, etc... is it possible for someone to do
well
> without this stuff? I can routinely finish all the dwarven quests,
> occasionally get Norrak's sword, and do most of the other early game
> stuff...pyramid, kill the assassin prince, PC, VD, SMC, I can get to
the
> RoTHK but I've never had a good enough character to beat him.
>

Speed scumming isn't completely necessary to a character with
teleportation and teleport control. It's nice to have on stages with no
teleportation though. Ring of weakness is abuse. Herbs aren't an abuse
because there is no other use for morgia and marilion. Eat morgia (any
status) for toughness and willpower and use (yes, use) marilion (as
long as it isn't cursed) for dexterity.

> I will say I've never had much luck at harvesting herbs, I generally
> just pick them all, hoping for more later. I wouldn't consider that
> scumming too much if I did try harvesting them, given it is a skill
> designed to garner more herbs.
>
> I've never got the water orb (is it in Blup's mom's cave?) I've never

> been in the ToEF for more than five seconds. Did the gremlins once.

> Killed a few steel zombies once, but not too far down in Darkforge.
I
> didn't generally do the infinite dungeon for experience or items, and

> I've never been able to get in the tree.
>

A certain sage can tell you where to seek the orbs. Since you don't use
the ID much, I assume you don't like to play spellcasters. Scumming
isn't unfair when you only have 1 PV to start with. The quickling tree
is a bad idea anyway when there's bugville.

I recommend doing the water temple before the TotHK because you need
willpower to resist confusion.

> Basically, I'm looking for some minor spoilers and responses from
people
> regarding training strength or speed from monster scumming. I know
most
> basic things, I think, like what morgia root and spenseweed can do
for
> stats, but I still need some help to get me past this early game
stuff.
>
> Thanks!
> Svalsbard

Being strained trains strength up to 16. Overburdoned can take you up
to 20. Of course, there's Garth the trainer, too.

 

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Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.adom (More info?)

EO <eo.eo@eo.eo> wrote in message news:<MPG.1c6ecbb19caa8671989680@news.verizon.net>...
> I've been reading posts here and it appears that almost every winning
> character used scumming of some sort at some time. Be it speed, abuse
> of weakness for strength, etc... is it possible for someone to do well
> without this stuff?

I'm not quite sure exactly what you do and don't know, and exactly how
much you want to be spoiled. I'll try to keep it light and general.

One of the really tricky things about ADOM is that your character has
a whole ton of variables that you can't normally see, and they have
massive effects on your survival in certain (sometimes all) areas.
Some are good, a few are bad. On particular variable is luck (which
has a couple of positive and a couple of negative manifestations), and
if you become very unlucky the game becomes MASSIVELY harder. (Never
strike Karmics in melee, it's unlucky!) There are items, equipment,
corpses and effects which grant and take away these things, but there
are always messages that clue you in when they happen.

If you want to investigate these yourself, there are things in the
game that help you to do so (scrolls + spellbooks of greater identify
for items, potions of insight and spellbooks of revelation for
yourself.)

> I will say I've never had much luck at harvesting herbs,

It's worth figuring out how to do so, or reading spoilers, to get
enough morgia to boost your toughness to 25 (about the limit). This
is very much needed for some characters, and useful for all.

> I've never got the water orb (is it in Blup's mom's cave?) I've never
> been in the ToEF for more than five seconds. Did the gremlins once.
> Killed a few steel zombies once, but not too far down in Darkforge. I
> didn't generally do the infinite dungeon for experience or items, and
> I've never been able to get in the tree.

No, the orb is not in blup's mom cave. Listen to what Khelavaster
says, the minstrel may well have a song about the orbs as well. Look
for an unusally wet place. You may have to work hard to get in.

Darkforge is generally achievable when you have DV/PV near 30/30, 150+
HP and a penetrating or massively damaging weapon, or the Lightning
Bolt spell. Hit and run, and don't let your HP drop too low in case
of critical hits. It's well worth completing Darkforge as there are
some very nice rooms in there somewhere. Watch out though, there's
also an item that looks very tempting but is extremely dangerous!

To get into the tree you need to be really, really small. You need to
lose a lot of weight. A hugely unnatural ammount of weight. Probably
more than you could lose in one go.

I rarely use the ID, I find it very boring.

> Basically, I'm looking for some minor spoilers and responses from people
> regarding training strength or speed from monster scumming. I know most
> basic things, I think, like what morgia root and spenseweed can do for
> stats, but I still need some help to get me past this early game stuff.

I don't consider scumming for strength or speed really necessary to
win. Of much greater importance to my mind is avoiding undead strengh
drains (I don't like to go near the graveyards until I'm 20/15 or
better, and don't melee vampires early on.) Most of the races can get
their strength to a decent level by spending the very early game
burdened. Dwarftown is also useful; Thrundarr's ogre quest generates
lots of Ogre corpses, which can boost strength.

A couple of other hints:

- Try to fight with spear + shield. The polearm weapon skill is
amazing (grants significant bonuses to DV). Orcish Spears are good
and are very easy to come by (Hill Orcs, a random encounter,
throw/drop them all the time), then identify every spear you encounter
until you find something really worth fighting with.

- Train bows and crossbows. You want to get both to level 5 nice and
early. Pick up every bow you find to indentify it. Identify every
bundle of arrows and quarrels. Identify every weapon too for that
matter. Just drop them on a a co-aligned altar and wield / fire the
uncursed/blessed ones.

- Understand that almost every item in the game has a use. A lot of
the more exotic attacks (thrown potions of poision, blindness, etc)
which are not generally necessary can make-or-break vs particularly
troublesome monsters. This isn't a console RPG - in ADOM, you can
poison and paralyse the 'bosses'!

Hope this is useful.

- Kevin

 

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Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.adom (More info?)

On Sun, 06 Feb 2005 07:33:49 GMT, EO <eo.eo@eo.eo> tried to confuse
everyone with this message:

>Here's the question. I've played ADOM forever, but the farthest I've
>ever got was to the Banshee, and was killed instantly because I didn't
>know she was at that level (I still haven't been too terribly spoiled,
>so I really don't know what exactly goes on everywhere).
>
>I've been reading posts here and it appears that almost every winning
>character used scumming of some sort at some time. Be it speed, abuse
>of weakness for strength, etc... is it possible for someone to do well
>without this stuff?

I've made it to D:50 without scumming. But my character was too weak and
the first balor killed him 🙁. I really find all these techniques too
boring, so I'm kind of playing a some sort of challenge game without bug
temple-scumming, ogre-scumming, gremlin-scumming, piety-scumming and of
course save-scumming (IMO TB should ban savescumming, although I realize
it's impossible). But it seems I'm not a good enough player for that
challenge.

--
|a\o/r|,-------------.,---------- Timofei Shatrov aka Grue ------------.
| m"a ||FC AMKAR PERM|| mail: grue at mail.ru http://grue3.tripod.com |
| k || PWNZ J00 || KoL:Grue3 NationStates:Holypunkeye |
`-----'`-------------'`-------------------------------------------[4*72]

 

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Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.adom (More info?)

EO wrote:

> Here's the question. I've played ADOM forever, but the farthest I've
> ever got was to the Banshee, and was killed instantly because I didn't
> know she was at that level (I still haven't been too terribly spoiled,
> so I really don't know what exactly goes on everywhere).
>
> I've been reading posts here and it appears that almost every winning
> character used scumming of some sort at some time. Be it speed, abuse
> of weakness for strength, etc... is it possible for someone to do well
> without this stuff? I can routinely finish all the dwarven quests,
> occasionally get Norrak's sword, and do most of the other early game
> stuff...pyramid, kill the assassin prince, PC, VD, SMC, I can get to the
> RoTHK but I've never had a good enough character to beat him.
>
> I will say I've never had much luck at harvesting herbs, I generally
> just pick them all, hoping for more later. I wouldn't consider that
> scumming too much if I did try harvesting them, given it is a skill
> designed to garner more herbs.
>
> I've never got the water orb (is it in Blup's mom's cave?) I've never
> been in the ToEF for more than five seconds. Did the gremlins once.
> Killed a few steel zombies once, but not too far down in Darkforge. I
> didn't generally do the infinite dungeon for experience or items, and
> I've never been able to get in the tree.
>
> Basically, I'm looking for some minor spoilers and responses from people
> regarding training strength or speed from monster scumming. I know most
> basic things, I think, like what morgia root and spenseweed can do for
> stats, but I still need some help to get me past this early game stuff.

Ah, playing with only minor spoilers. An admirable task!

It's difficult to give general non-spoily hints really, it would be good
if you could post some specific questions or maybe YASD posts so we can
see how and where you die, and what you could have done about it.

It sounds like you are getting stuck about mid game, which is generally
regarded as quite hard. You have done all the early stuff, and need to
get that RoTHK before you can press on further. I'm quite surprised you
are having trouble with him actually, if you have had characters that
could kill steel zombies. Just make sure you have some source of resisting
confusion (or high willpower), fire resistance to protect you from his
magic missile type attack, and either reasonable melee damage or some
undead slaying ammo.

It IS certainly possible to win without scumming, though scumming to some
extend makes it easier. I don't ever scum for speed due to the experience
gain penalties, but I ALWAYS train my willpower, toughness and dexterity
to 25 with herbs, and almost always go for multiple precrownings too.

Why not post us a summary of your general tactics. Perhaps there is something
important you are missing like not using divine help or missile weapons or
something.

 

[Guest]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.adom (More info?)

EO wrote:

> I've been reading posts here and it appears that almost every winning
> character used scumming of some sort at some time. Be it speed, abuse
> of weakness for strength, etc... is it possible for someone to do well
> without this stuff?

Yes, definitely. I don't do any of this stuff because it is to boring. I
never go for more than one precrowning either. Still no problem winning.

> I will say I've never had much luck at harvesting herbs, I generally
> just pick them all, hoping for more later. I wouldn't consider that
> scumming too much if I did try harvesting them, given it is a skill
> designed to garner more herbs.

I don't count that as scumming either; herb harvesting definitely helps.

> I've never got the water orb (is it in Blup's mom's cave?) I've never
> been in the ToEF for more than five seconds.

Hey, you can do that with a level one character! Enter, wait ten
seconds, leave! 🙂

> Basically, I'm looking for some minor spoilers and responses from people
> regarding training strength or speed from monster scumming. I know most
> basic things, I think, like what morgia root and spenseweed can do for
> stats, but I still need some help to get me past this early game stuff.

Honestly, I wouldn't bother with those methods that intentionally lower
your stats -- sounds quite unfun to me, and it just isn't necessary. I
usually get my strength to ~16 by walking around burdened and the
herb-related skills to 25 by using herbs, and that's it for voluntary
stat raising.

Malte

 

[eo]

Archived from groups: rec.games.roguelike.adom (More info?)

I guess I'll put spoiler space here
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Thanks for the help. I guess I will look into harvesting herbs
better...like I've said, I am a little spoiled, so I know about the
"Life" method that herbs grow, I've just never had the patience to get
it to work right.

I know about the wax for ears for the Banshee, I just hadn't known where
she was. I found out about the confusion from the skeleton at the
bottom of the HK dungeon, but I didn't realize it'd make me fall off my
ice bridge. I guess I'll freeze the whole place next time.

I guess its just a matter of being more careful. My wife and I tend to
stall out after doing the Pyramid and other early quests, given the
difficulty of the HK dungeon and we almost look for a way to die
spectacularly.

I'll see if I get a better quality but still sad death shortly and I'll
post it up here, that might be the best way to determine how to go about
it next.

Thanks again for the help!
Svalsbard